Archive for the ‘public policy–nec’ Category

Matt Levine has an illuminating post about why the recent reduction in corporate tax rates results in a reduction in some corporations’ reported profits. It seems that past losses can be saved as a “deferred tax asset,” permitting a reduction in taxes to be paid in future years. But the ratio of losses to tax reduction declines when the tax rate declines, so the deferred tax asset is reduced. Levine notes that such tax rate reduction can cause a corporation to appear less well capitalized, since it reduces assets, even tho it increases expected after-tax income.

Just another illustration of the absurdity of a corporate income tax (or perhaps of corporations in general). Of course corporations should pay taxes – based on the land (including spectrum and other natural resources) that they claim. And they should pay additional taxes reflecting the limited liability granted by the state. But the accounting concept of corporate income has little to do with this.

Well now, more precisely, how come the spectrum held by a TV station broadcasting from Ottawa fetched a higher price than any other station offered? WWTO is owned by Trinity Broadcasting and broadcasts on five digital subchannels according to the Wikipedia article. According to the report today from the Federal Communications Commission, their spectrum sold for $304 million, highest in the U S. , while WYCC’s spectrum in Chicago fetched only $16 million. I know there are all kinds of technical considerations that might explain the difference, but it’s a curious one. Some of us are suspicious when government-owned assets are sold for a comparatively low price. Both stations are reportedly going off the air.

Nationwide, most of the spectrum has been “purchased” by wireless companies but apparently some will be returned to the “unlicensed” category for use by wifi and similar low-power devices.

So most of the spectrum will be used by private corporations to provide services from which they expect to obtain a profit. Kind of like commercial land, which everyone agrees is subject to tax. So why does the government not tax privately-held spectrum?

In order to fund community needs from a tax on land value, assessors need to estimate what that land value is. Conceptually the task need not be difficult (Ted Gwartney outlines some options here, but a more complete and still-valid examination is in this book.) Basically, you look at sales prices for actual land transactions, and make adjustments for parcels which haven’t sold recently or where land comprises only a small part of the value. But what happens if the buyer pays something additional, “off the books,” for the land?

According to Peter Katz, that seems to be what often happens. This presentation at APA last March starts off slow (and self-promotional), but moves along thru some interesting territory. Regarding the price of vacant land, he asserts that, in many desirable areas, developers have to first buy (or option) the land, then negotiate with local authorities to get permission to build. Getting that permission might require agreeing to donate money (or land) for public use, or perhaps less savory expenditures, and to the developer this is part of the cost of land. If an area of any size is subject to such constraints, all the land sales are below market prices by the amount of such costs, and all sites, whether sold or not, receive assessed land values that are lower than what developers actually pay to get a buildable site. This results in less public revenue, implying a need for other taxes, as well as a tendency to develop at lower densities than might be appropriate, when developers choose to settle for existing zoning rather than what they might be able to negotiate. Katz suggests that a formal study of this effect should be done, and nominates Lincoln Institute to make it happen.

Katz’s remedy seems to be a combination of form-based zoning codes, plus a sophisticated (and presumably accurate) fiscal impact analysis that might show denser development to actually be more “profitable” to governments. But, responding to a question about 65 minutes into (and near the end of) his talk, he acknowledges that funding government from a land value tax would be a good way to obtain the desired development pattern, and that Henry George was a great guy. His observation that Georgists tend to be wacky has been made before, and I can’t say it’s wrong.

An informed review by political economist Ed Dodson of Tim Howard’s new book about the collapse of Fannie Mae. The senior people understood that they were in trouble due to politics and ideology, and they saw the collapse of underwriting standards, but most had no interest in addressing the fundamental cause.

Melissa Kite had a piece in Thursday’s Guardian complaining about the escalating cost of London housing. She starts off well, observing that she can’t earn as much in a year as the increase in the value of her flat. “[W]hat does it say about our society when we can, in theory at least, make more money doing nothing than we can by the sweat of our brow?” Agreed, it’s a problem. So what does she recommend?

In New York, 45% of people live in rent-stabilised accommodation where landlords are limited to increasing rates by a certain percentage each year. This is not rent control – which accounts for only 1% of tenants – but rent with controlled increases, an important difference.

I will wait to hear from New Yorkers about how this has solved their housing problem. Going back to the Guardian article, Kite gets pretty close when she observes that “a British company is selling a flat-pack self-assembly ‘house in a box.’ But she doesn’t take the next step to ask: “If you buy one, where are you going to place it?” The answer, of course, will be that anyone who can afford only the flat-pack house will be unable to obtain a suitable site anywhere near London.

The problem isn’t house costs, it’s land costs. And land costs would be a lot lower if all land was subject to a stiff site value tax, because there could be little or no speculative premium. (To be clear, the cost of obtaining a site for your house, purchase financing plus tax, would be much less if landholders weren’t pricing sites based on their future hopes rather than current usefulness.) This point is readily made, for example here and here. It’s unfortunate that the writer of the Guardian article seems unfamiliar with the concept.

If the earth belongs to the people, then whatever is paid for the use thereof belongs to them in some equitable fashion also. Therefore, beyond what’s needed for legitimate government purposes, there would seem to be enough for a considerable “citizen’s dividend” for everyone. Plenty of discussion on this subject can be found here.

My guess is that it would likely be enough to replace most of the aid programs which provide funds — rarely enough but maybe better than nothing — to low income people. One advantage is that it could be administered at relatively modest expense. A related advantage is that it can probably be made to work, with everyone getting what they’re entitled to. This latter aspect is what came to mind when I read this NY Times article, in which a Georgetown law professor summarizes “a litany of automation and contracting meltdowns” whereby the poor were unable to obtain benefits to which they were entitled under various aid programs and which may have been essential to their support.

His point seems to be that, while healthcare.gov suffered major problems initially, it was soon repaired because its failure affected many non-poor people. (I have no idea how well-repaired it might be, but will assume he is correct about this.) He does not mention the citizens dividend, perhaps is unaware of it, or maybe ignores it because it would likely reduce the demand for lawyers. But he makes the case. A regular check for everyone, as a just entitlement, would be a far simpler system than most of the means-tested (and otherwise-restricted) aid programs which cost taxpayers so much money.

And while we’re on the subject of means-tested programs, consider this:

[I]f a single mother has two children in childcare and she’s making $36,000, she’ll pay about $310 a month for childcare. Then, if she gets a raise to $37,000, she’ll need to pay $1,200 a month for childcare because of the loss of a subsidy.

Of course, it needn’t be a raise, it might just be a decision to work a bit of overtime. I have written about this before and I will probably have to write about it again. Means-tested aid is a disgrace.

Writing in Standard Digital, Charles Kanjama proposes that “If government was clever, it would include a value-capture approach in project financing.” He’s writing about big infrastructure projects, which in his time (2014) and place (Kenya) include railway and port improvements. He suggests that perhaps half the cost should come from land value tax, without explaining why it would be appropriate for landowners to receive half the benefit of improvements paid for by the general community. (Kanjama is an attorney and accountant who was rated among the top 100 legal minds in Kenya as well as one of the 100 most influential people in that country.)

The same edition (January 4 2014) carries another article showing a problem resulting from failure of the community to collect all the rent. It seems that the government wanted to remove a large number of squatters who had settled in a protected forest. Ordered to vacate, they each received 400,000 shillings ($4604.67 US, according to Wolfram Alpha) to purchase land elsewhere. Now the time for relocation has expired, and many spent the money on things other than land. Of course I don’t know these people, don’t know what land was available, don’t know their needs, but very clearly if land were nearly free (as results from a high land value tax) they would almost certainly be better off.

From C. Eugene Steuerle’s June 27, 2012 statement at http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/901508-Marginal-Tax-Rates-Work-and-the-Nations-Real-Tax-System.pdf

I’ve written before about the wild effects of graduated taxes and means-tested benefits which can dump low-income workers into effective tax brackets in excess of 100%. That is, once the effects on eligibility for earned income tax credit, child tax credit, medicaid, SNAP (food stamps), subsidized housing, and so forth are taken into account, an extra $1000 of income can easily cost more than that amount in increased taxes plus reduced benefits. (Worse, most low-income people don’t have professional accountants who keep track of this, and so they don’t know in advance what the effects of getting a raise, or taking some overtime, might be.)

This is hardly original with me, and most recently the Congressional Budget Office has issued a report on the subject, summarized here by Evan Soltas of Bloomberg. What can be done to fix this? Not much, conclude most writers including Soltas. We need tax revenue, we need to target aid to those with the greatest need, we can’t expect the rich to pay everything (since they have the lobbyists, lawyers and accountants to limit the taxes they pay.)

None of the writers who get attention seem to consider the citizens dividend. The basic idea is that government collects all the land rent — that is, the effective rental value of private control of natural resources — and share it with all citizens, everyone getting an equal share. It’s done on a small scale in several jurisdictions, including Alaska where each state resident gets a thousand dollars or so, each year, as a share of investments funded by mineral resources. Of course, natural resources include not only oil, gas, and ore, but also the electromagnetic spectrum, agricultural land, forests, and much of the value of land sites (except of course those which have no market value.) Suppose this rental value, or just a substantial part of it, were collected by the federal government and distributed, equally, to every U S citizen (maybe legal permanent residents should get a share also). How much would that be? Would it be enough to pretty much replace most means-tested programs? Wouldn’t that solve our problem?

Of course, arguments for collecting economic rent go far beyond fixing the screwed-up incentives of means-tested programs and graduated income taxes, (visit a Henry George School or the Henry George Institute to learn more), but let’s not forget this benefit.

And by the way, it isn’t only the poor who can face these >100% marginal rates. I wrote before about how certain Cook County homeowners with incomes in the $75,000 – $100,000 could face such rates; I don’t know whether these limits remain in effect. More broadly, it seems that affluent Americans subject to Medicare face a similar situation: As explained here, should your “modified adjusted gross income” amount to $107,001, then your Medicare cost will be $754.80 more than if your income had been only $107,000. The effective tax rate on that particular dollar is 75,480%. (Of course if you have a really alert accountant keeping track of all your financial affairs, she will alert you and find a way to avoid that extra dollar. And that accountant knows that the rates quoted above are for 2011 income, at least I think they are, and different limits will be in effect for the current year.)

When I see the same theme coming from two different sources, I think there’s a trend (tho maybe it just means I wasn’t paying attention). And so we heard Meredith Whitney a few days back describing the developing divide of local and state governments, between those that are solvent (and can attract mobile, affluent residents and investors) and those spiralling down the debt hole. Now Al Lewis looks at it from the retail side– nobody wants to invest where the mundanes live, but as areas like Silicon Valley and Washington continue to prosper retail facilities are renewed and enlarged.

In a democracy of educated, thinking citizens, any state finding itself on the wrong side of this divide could reverse its decline simply by removing all taxes on wages, capital, purchases, and transactions in general, substituting a very heavy tax on land value (which ideally would include the value of mortgages on land, to be paid by the mortgage lender rather than the borrower). Unfortunately, the “investors” who control much of the land in declining areas have the resources to fool the electorate, or can work directly with elected officials to prevent effective reform.

Longtime HGS supporter Joseph Bast, head of the Heartland Institute, has a new policy brief (pdf), with a podcast overview, recommending that fans of professional “sports” own the teams thru nonprofit corporations. The only actual example of this is the Green Bay Packers, which originated as a for-profit organization but was bought out of bankruptcy by a fan-organized nonprofit. They would never leave Green Bay since the owners cannot profit by moving them. Thus the main lever used by for-profit teams to extort new stadiums and other favors would be broken.

Pointing out that teams currently extract monopoly rents from the community, Bast mentions Henry George but rejects George’s idea that natural monopolies should be municipally-owned. Of course, George never applied this concept to professional “sports,” which existed in his day but was nothing like what we see now. The closest I can think of is that George considered the idea of a publicly-subsidized theater to be so absurd, that he compared it to subsidy of various other industries to illustrate the absurdity of the latter.

So why don’t fans establish nonprofit teams? My personal theory is that most fans of professional “sports” are masochists and like to be abused. But perhaps I’m wrong. Bast suggests routes around other barriers including opposition of major leagues, high cost of setting up a team, and existing taxpayer-subsidized facilities which are controlled by existing monopolies.